TechCrunch50: Click on Me! Click on Me! Or: Better Ads

Ads were the focus of an early afternoon session at TechCrunch50, especially how to make them more effective. (Post will be updated as more presentations occur.)

Udorse allows what previously was known as "tagging" to evolve into endorsing, where a user can endorse a product, and then make cash. Users can endorse products, and then get a cut of referral links, either donating them to charity or getting them donated to a PayPal account. The phrase "a few dollars" was used as a reward for endorsing a shirt. It appears that users have to link the products to a product page manually, however.

The site is launching Armani Exchange and American Apparel. New retailers can sign up and pay only for performance, according to Geoffrey Lewis, a co-founder of the site. Coming soon: apps for the iPhone, and a Twitter account.

Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of user experience and search (and a fashion maven) unsurprisingly *ahem* endorsed the site. Lewis said they can't serve the pictures within Facebook as yet. But, ladies, do you want your friends wearing the exact same dress?

A part-time journalist (ugh) was hired by the site to find the top 200 influencers online and offer them access to the site. Looks like the site is still in private beta.

RackUp.com hopes to add some excitement to online gift cards, by turning them into a fun online auction.
The promise is that winners will always get more than what they paid
for. The bottom line is that customers are already spending money
online, and take 60 seconds have fun, take no risk (if you don't win
you don't pay) and rack up some gift cards. The site is open today in a
demo mode. already, 20major brands have been signed up, according to
the company.

Marc Rochman, the co-founder claimed that the site was like preloading
a account, but with the caveat that a $50 gift card purchase may return
something like $60. The site charges a fee (about 8 percent of the
transaction) to the retailer as a means to drive attention, and
revenue, to its brand to offset the costs.

5to1.com hopes to address the
problem of falling CPM (cost per million) prices. They think all major
media companies can run ads in concert with the content itself. For the
Super Bowl, the company can go ahead and prep ads. Unlike regular
networks, where a phone call is needed to pull an ad, the company hopes
to make an ad network much like iTunes, where an ad is controlled by
the touch of a button.

For publishers, there's an interesting
feature: if you're a Boston Red Sox blogger, the platform will allow
you to search for ads that have worked on similar sites, which will
match the publisher with a quality ad.

"What we're finding is
that people are writing content 24 hours a day to try and build an
audience. But they don't have control [of the ad], said James Heckman,
the site's founder and chief executive.

DataXu.com hopes it has the Holy
Grail of ad mechanisms, "delivering the right to the right consumer in
real time". The plan is to work with a Google-delivered online ad
marketplace to buy display ads in real time. (Marissa Mayer, a
panelist, declined to comment on the plan.)

A "mission control" dashboard app controls the whole thing. Step 1: put
the measurement tags on the whole campaign. As the ads stream through
the network, it reports back as to who it was shown and when its was
shown. The platform then assigns tags to the content. Then the site
creates algorithms to predict which combination of sites and ads will
maximize revenue. Two weeks of data is in: from 100s of millions of
impressions, news and sports are high in content categories, with
morning ads attracting the most clicks.

The site, naturally, claims that it is more effective than traditional advertising.

SeatGeek aims to be a tool to
assist buyers and sellers for the secondary ticket market, such as
StubHub, optimizing the best time to buy or sell a ticket to optimize
profit. The site's algorithms predicts how ticket prices will rise or
fall: not a big deal for the Seattle Mariners, one of the cheapest
tickets in the big leagues. But for a Yankees game, knowing when the
price will fall and by how much can save $100 or more.

The site's database scours the Web each day and pulls data from a
number of sites, as wel as data like which teams are in a pennant race,
the weather, the pitching matchup, and whether there's a concert or
fireworks show. The site also works for concerts and other events. A
nice feature: SeatGeek will email you when the site believes the price
has hit rock bottom, so you can maximize the profit. A related tool for
brokers also gives them data and access to season ticket holders. Think
SeatGeek might be wrong? Buy insurance to protect your price.

Naturally, the site will take a cut of the price. With games that are
sold out, SeatGeek predicts that the site will fluctuate by 40 percent.
Directionally, SeatGeek predicts that it is "directionally correct" on
the price trend 80 percent of the time. Why don't they buy and sell
tickets themselves? The founders claimed that they aren't as good at
procuring tickets as the brokers. (My question: doesn't the site's
information act as a sort of pump-and-dump mechanism?)

HealthyWage argues that
health care is a huge problem, but with a huge solution: money. Because
the site knows that an obese person pays about $1,400 more than others
in heathcare-related expenses. After registering, a member reports how
he or she's doing, reporting weight and diet, including the nutritive
content. The site also includes a social networking element.

Here's the kicker: if the patient accomplishes the goals, he or she
gets paid: $200, in the example chief medical officer Christina Jenkins
gave. If she invested in the site, she'll get back a matching amount,
paid by a third party nonprofit.

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